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Northern Ireland: The Orange State
Michael Farrell has written the first full-length political history of Northern Ireland from its violent birth to the violent present (1976).
The book describes the bloody pogroms with which the Unionist leaders, armed and financed by Britain, established their state and cowed the minority into submission; how they created an Orange state based on Protestant privilege.
Michael Farrell records the fruitless efforts of the Catholics, in and out of parliament, to redress their grievances and shows how, in every decade, they have been driven to armed revolt. He describes the few great moments of working-class solidarity and how the Unionist leaders smashed the working-class movement with sectarian politics.
Farrell traces the recent development of Loyalism into a threat to the traditional power structure in Northern Ireland which has brought down two Prime Ministers and wrecked Britain's most elaborate effort yet to solve the Irish problem.
The book describes the bloody pogroms with which the Unionist leaders, armed and financed by Britain, established their state and cowed the minority into submission; how they created an Orange state based on Protestant privilege.
Michael Farrell records the fruitless efforts of the Catholics, in and out of parliament, to redress their grievances and shows how, in every decade, they have been driven to armed revolt. He describes the few great moments of working-class solidarity and how the Unionist leaders smashed the working-class movement with sectarian politics.
Farrell traces the recent development of Loyalism into a threat to the traditional power structure in Northern Ireland which has brought down two Prime Ministers and wrecked Britain's most elaborate effort yet to solve the Irish problem.
407 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 19, 2018
Michael Farrell was well placed to accurately assess the state of Northern Ireland in the 1970's. He had been involved in the early Civil Rights struggles through the "Peoples Democracy" movement, which emerged from the student body at QUB. In this book he explores the rise and control of Northern Ireland by a unionist elite through the vehicle of the orange order. Creating a hegemony (which, as history has shown us, could not sustain), at the expense of the non conformist catholic minority. An excellent read and still relevant today almost half a century later.
November 29, 2025
essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Orangeism, the historic nature of the Northern State, the historic impediments (imposed by imperialism) on class struggle in Ireland. wonderful scholarly work and obviously motivated by a will to achieve socialism and genuine democracy in Ireland
June 19, 2023
This was recommended to us while we were in Belfast in 2022. Seems to be long out of print, took me a while to source an affordable copy through Abebooks. This has previously been in a College library in Kentucky.
Some harrowing stuff about the brutality of the 20’s and 30’s that I was mostly unaware of.
I thought it flagged when dealing with the period immediately after WW2, but definitely found its stride when it got on to the 60’s and the Civil Rights movement.
Some harrowing stuff about the brutality of the 20’s and 30’s that I was mostly unaware of.
I thought it flagged when dealing with the period immediately after WW2, but definitely found its stride when it got on to the 60’s and the Civil Rights movement.
June 1, 2025
One can read the Conclusions sections and get most of the book. As a avowedly political book, the summaries of persons, parties, and newspapers was a useful inclusion. Reading this book, one can easily inhabit Farrell's state of mind. Getting the firsthand account of a leader of the Civil Rights march is invaluable. Farrell's thesis that the crisis in Northern Ireland could not be resolved without the end of the "statelet" ended up being untrue. Nowadays Farrell is a member of the Bureau of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.
While some standards can be relaxed for a polemic, the footnotes were sorely lacking in some places, particularly those sentences seeking to summarize controversial (violent) events. The worst instance of this is, regarding the 1939 Coventry bombing, his claim that "Barnes had had no part in the bombing at all and McCormack had had no part in the panic dumping of the bomb". In fact, both were IRA men: Barnes had brought materials to McCormick (as his name is spelled in other sources), who promptly made a bomb and handed it off to a third man who planted the bomb. All of this Farrell waves away by calling the English hysteric and that "neither the British public nor the courts were interested in such technicalities". Omitting any footnotes that could assist the reader in discovering this whitewashing is not a favor to any supporters of Farrell that might encounter well-informed opposition.
Despite Farrell's claim to socialism and prominent role in leading the PD, the book disappointingly focuses on sectarian issues. Unemployment and discrimination get brought up briefly at times, but there is no exploration of rural workers or the de-industrialization of Belfast that Farrell alludes to in his later chapters. There is no comparison between the North and South that might help us understand how economically repressive Stormont might have been compared to Dublin.
The first third of the book is good and the framing of Northern Irish history around Unionist leaders and their demise is useful. The later sections are more suspect, and Farrell's direct role in the events gives me some pause in accepting his narrative. During the events leading up to the civil rights march, many other sources knew and would have informed Farrell at the time that the march would have lead to a backlash. Farrell was deeply opposed to O'Neill's modest steps towards reconcilliation and waited until the semester ended to hold the meeting that overrode many of his comrades' apprehensions to approve the march. There is also a shell game going on: this book focuses on the public slogan of One Man, One Vote but radical flags were unfurled at the march and Farrell was a known agitator. Indeed this book is an excellent demonstration of the problems regarding the worship of the word "democracy". The simple headcount that maintained the Unionist state was undemocratic in Farrell's view, yet the Soviet undertones of the title People's Democracy would have sat uneasily with the largely Catholic demographic Farrell hoped to appeal to. But I digress.
Farrell holds up the reaction to the march as shocking evidence of the state's depravity, but is unable to clear away the suspicion that he (correctly) predicted the backlash with the (incorrect) assumption that it would speed up the end of Northern Ireland. This strategy rhymes with the pIRA's claimed strategy of forcing the British authorities to exercise draconian military rule. Indeed, the general effect of the book is not necessarily to endorse violence, but to provide useful excuses for its Republican variety. One of the few useful footnotes sums it up nicely: "The Peoples Democracy had steadily evolved since 1968 from a loose student activist group into a disciplined marxist organisation, which almost alone on the Irish left gave critical support to the Provisionals’ campaign". With the blessing of hindsight, we can thank the singularly wise PD for its prescription that nothing would help the worker more than being plunged into a decades-long carousel of bombings and retaliatory shootings.
A few more complaints may be unreasonable given the predilections of the author, but greater scrutiny of anti-Unionism's constant factionalism and lack of productive organizing during abstentionist periods seem deserved. Protestant workers are willing to strike alongside Catholics in one chapter only to be whipped into murderous frenzies over the constitutional question in the next, with no explanation given beyond elite bigotry. Unionists are portrayed as using Communism as a bogeyman at the same time Farrell proudly recounts the influence of Marxists within the labor, Republican, and Civil Rights movements. In later chapters British capitalism happily gobbles up the South while also somehow needing to retain the North as a plantation.
Popular enough to deserve attention. The early chapters double back on the historical timeline a bit but around the fourth chapter Farrell hits his stride and the rest is easily digestible. Well written with a good balance between anecdote and general trend.
While some standards can be relaxed for a polemic, the footnotes were sorely lacking in some places, particularly those sentences seeking to summarize controversial (violent) events. The worst instance of this is, regarding the 1939 Coventry bombing, his claim that "Barnes had had no part in the bombing at all and McCormack had had no part in the panic dumping of the bomb". In fact, both were IRA men: Barnes had brought materials to McCormick (as his name is spelled in other sources), who promptly made a bomb and handed it off to a third man who planted the bomb. All of this Farrell waves away by calling the English hysteric and that "neither the British public nor the courts were interested in such technicalities". Omitting any footnotes that could assist the reader in discovering this whitewashing is not a favor to any supporters of Farrell that might encounter well-informed opposition.
Despite Farrell's claim to socialism and prominent role in leading the PD, the book disappointingly focuses on sectarian issues. Unemployment and discrimination get brought up briefly at times, but there is no exploration of rural workers or the de-industrialization of Belfast that Farrell alludes to in his later chapters. There is no comparison between the North and South that might help us understand how economically repressive Stormont might have been compared to Dublin.
The first third of the book is good and the framing of Northern Irish history around Unionist leaders and their demise is useful. The later sections are more suspect, and Farrell's direct role in the events gives me some pause in accepting his narrative. During the events leading up to the civil rights march, many other sources knew and would have informed Farrell at the time that the march would have lead to a backlash. Farrell was deeply opposed to O'Neill's modest steps towards reconcilliation and waited until the semester ended to hold the meeting that overrode many of his comrades' apprehensions to approve the march. There is also a shell game going on: this book focuses on the public slogan of One Man, One Vote but radical flags were unfurled at the march and Farrell was a known agitator. Indeed this book is an excellent demonstration of the problems regarding the worship of the word "democracy". The simple headcount that maintained the Unionist state was undemocratic in Farrell's view, yet the Soviet undertones of the title People's Democracy would have sat uneasily with the largely Catholic demographic Farrell hoped to appeal to. But I digress.
Farrell holds up the reaction to the march as shocking evidence of the state's depravity, but is unable to clear away the suspicion that he (correctly) predicted the backlash with the (incorrect) assumption that it would speed up the end of Northern Ireland. This strategy rhymes with the pIRA's claimed strategy of forcing the British authorities to exercise draconian military rule. Indeed, the general effect of the book is not necessarily to endorse violence, but to provide useful excuses for its Republican variety. One of the few useful footnotes sums it up nicely: "The Peoples Democracy had steadily evolved since 1968 from a loose student activist group into a disciplined marxist organisation, which almost alone on the Irish left gave critical support to the Provisionals’ campaign". With the blessing of hindsight, we can thank the singularly wise PD for its prescription that nothing would help the worker more than being plunged into a decades-long carousel of bombings and retaliatory shootings.
A few more complaints may be unreasonable given the predilections of the author, but greater scrutiny of anti-Unionism's constant factionalism and lack of productive organizing during abstentionist periods seem deserved. Protestant workers are willing to strike alongside Catholics in one chapter only to be whipped into murderous frenzies over the constitutional question in the next, with no explanation given beyond elite bigotry. Unionists are portrayed as using Communism as a bogeyman at the same time Farrell proudly recounts the influence of Marxists within the labor, Republican, and Civil Rights movements. In later chapters British capitalism happily gobbles up the South while also somehow needing to retain the North as a plantation.
Popular enough to deserve attention. The early chapters double back on the historical timeline a bit but around the fourth chapter Farrell hits his stride and the rest is easily digestible. Well written with a good balance between anecdote and general trend.
June 2, 2024
Very good and much insightful
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews